Welcome baby!

Baby arrived June 6th.  More to come later when I feel up to typing entire blog posts on my phone and/or locate a computer in the chaos that ensued from baby not waiting for our move deadline.  We are all doing well, and she is super cute!

Not a coincidence . . .

When I visited the midwife, her comment was that I looked great for 38 weeks:

"Most people look really tired now, but you look much better than three weeks ago!"
"Well, three weeks ago, the semester ended, so things are a lot easier now . . . "

While I did try to plan for a summer baby (as much as one can with these things), it turns out it was also a brilliant idea to hit the last month as the semester ended--that was such a relief that this month isn't really seeming too bad, contrary to my expectations.  Now, let's hope this trend continues through birth!

Packing, again

Given my frequent moving for the last 14 years or so, I've basically come to associate the end of the academic year with packing and moving.  Even in years when I've been coming back to the same apartment in the Fall, I've been working another job, in another city, another country for the Summer, so more packing.  Now we are packing yet again, hopefully to be moved in before baby arrives (two more weeks, inshallah . . . )

The main difference this time is that we bought a house, as we like our location and I like my job, and so we aren't planning to move for several years at the least, something that is both exhilarating and scary.  On the one hand, it is exciting to be able to convert the garage into a dance studio, paint the walls whatever color I like, and not evaluate every purchase I make on its potential for moving in the future.  On the other hand, there is the mortgage and being responsible for a house.  Yikes!

In terms of packing, the new and old places are only ten minutes apart, so we can move gradually (i.e. no countries or oceans to cross), which is also pretty exciting.  A carload a day, a day of moving furniture, and we're more or less done in a week.  The cats will no doubt be excited as well, especially when they discover how much more room for adventures they will have in the house.

So back to packing, but hopefully the last packing for a good long while!

Summer of Data Cleaning

I love almost everything about research: collecting data, reading theory, writing articles, analyzing data, etc.  However, there is one thing I dislike very much about research, and that is processing all the data I collect in order to analyze it.  Despite el-wa7sh (my dissertation) coming in at 400 pages (quite long for my field), I barely scratched the surface of the data I collected for my dissertation with it.  On the one hand, this is useful, as I have lots of material to work towards tenure on.  On the other, I have to do a considerable amount of data processing to make it workable and also deidentify all of the data to close the active study with the IRB and have them leave me alone.  Data processing includes things like the dreaded transcription, which I still have more of to transcribe in a fashion suitable for linguistic, rather than content analysis, blacking out names and pictures from Facebook pages  (and of course the more active the user, and the better data I got, the longer this takes), making nice tables for SPSS and linking them to my qualitative data, etc.  Essentially, it is incredibly boring, and I have lots of it to do.  While many academics resolve to write things over the summer, I have submitted two articles so far this year, so instead I'm resolving to finally get all of my dissertation data cleaned up (which then means more writing, a much more enjoyable task).  I am secretly hoping that in the post-baby breastfeeding sleep deprivation state, this type of boring work will become challenging, and thus more interesting, but I have my doubts.

Planning classes for the Fall (that I won't be teaching due to maternity leave, but that's a different story) is my other summer occupation, but more on that later, including adventures in online language teaching!

Dance Demos Down!

This weekend was our local Celtic Festival, and I was in charge of organizing the demonstration dance stage.  We had a decent turnout of various types of Irish and Scottish dance styles.  Even better, baby cooperated and with the assistance of a pregnancy exercise belt let me do my own dance demonstration at 36 weeks, focusing on the National dances which require less jumping that the traditional Highland ones.   I'll be reminding any dance students of mine that ever complain about being tired of this feat . . . 

While I can't practice Highland like I'm used to, being able to continue teaching and demonstrating (and taking flamenco classes as well) has been the biggest relief of my third trimester, as I was afraid I would turn into some sort of immobile whale.  Instead, I get to be a dancing whale--infinitely better :-).   Four weeks to go!

Made it!

My first year on the tenure track is officially over!

Grades were finished Tuesday, assessments forms Wednesday, and my article for the semester today.
Alas, being pregnant means no alcohol to celebrate, but I did make a delicious apple spice cake with maple cream cheese frosting to celebrate turning in grades Tuesday, and ba2lawa for a colleague's retirement party Wednesday.  My husband is currently making caramel ice cream, which I can use to celebrate completing my article.  The disappointing part of all of this is that it turns out pregnancy, instead of allowing me to devour copious amounts of food as I had always believed, is squashing my stomach and making it nearly impossible to consume normal amounts of anything, even my favorite treats.  Well, five more weeks to go!

I'm also in a bit of a conundrum with this article, which came together far more quickly at the end than I was expecting.  I'm submitting to an edited book, and the deadline for submission isn't until June 30.  Due to baby, I was hoping to finish by the end of May, but I'm done now.  So do I submit 7 weeks early, or wait? I've ever been a procrastinator, but isn't finishing something 7 weeks early ridiculous to begin with?

Pregnancy is good for your posture

I always thought it was supposed to be the other way around, that pregnancy led to swaybacks and all sorts of other nastiness.  However, I am finding it to be quite the opposite--if I slouch, my stomach sticks me in the ribs, which is really uncomfortable, so I find myself constantly stretching and straightening my spine during the day, in contrast to hunching my shoulders as normal.  When standing, I normally over-rely on my abs and hip flexors, letting my other hip and butt muscles take a break.  But since the former are totally overworked due to the extra belly, I've noticed the latter stepping up to the task more--hopefully they will remember this once baby arrives!  7 weeks to go now . . .